Thursday, March 29, 2012

Terrible news for all of us, the void left in the universal consciousness is profound. Adrienne Rich has been a mentor, an influence and voice for many of us. She embodied the enlightened philospher-poet showing the inseparability of poetry and the personal from political and global reality. Her words will continue to have a great impact. Mine are inadequate to expressing my sense of loss. We have been honored that she expressed her love and support of the Blue Collar Review over the years. She was a friend of mine.

North American Time

IWhen my dreams showed signsof becomingpolitically correctno unruly imagesescaping beyond borderwhen walking in the street I found mythemes cut out for meknew what I would not reportfor fear of enemies' usagethen I began to wonder

IIEverything we writewill be used against usor against those we love.These are the terms,take them or leave them.Poetry never stood a chanceof standing outside history.One line typed twenty years agocan be blazed on a wall in spraypaintglorify art as detachmentor torture of those wedid not love but alsodid not want to kill

We move but our words standbecome responsibleand this is verbal privilege

IIITry sitting at a typewriterone calm summer eveningat a table by a windowin the country, try pretendingyour time does not existthat you are simply youthat the imagination simply strayslike a great moth, unintentionaltry telling yourselfyou are not accountableto the life of your tribethe breath of your planet

IVIt doesn't matter what you think.Words are found responsibleall you can do is choose themor chooseto remain silent. Or, you never had a choice,which is why the words that do standare responsibleand this is verbal privilege

VSuppose you want to writeof a woman braidinganother woman's hair--staightdown, or with beads and shellsin three-strand plaits or corn-rows--you had better know the thicknessthe length the patternwhy she decides to braid her hairhow it is done to herwhat country it happens inwhat else happens in that country

You have to know these things

VIPoet, sister: words--whether we like it or not--stand in a time of their own.no use protesting I wrote thatbefore Kollontai was exiledRosa Luxembourg, Malcolm,Anna Mae Aquash, murdered,before Treblinka, Birkenau,Hiroshima, before Sharpeville,Biafra, Bangla Desh, Boston,Atlanta, Soweto, Beirut, Assam--those faces, names of placessheared from the almanacof North American time

VIII am thinking this in a countrywhere words are stolen out of mouthsas bread is stolen out of mouthswhere poets don't go to jailfor being poets, but for beingdark-skinned, female, poor.I am writing this in a timewhen anything we writecan be used against those we lovewhere the context is never giventhough we try to explain, over and overFor the sake of poetry at leastI need to know these things

VIIISometimes, gliding at nightin a plane over New York CityI have felt like some messengercalled to enter, called to engagethis field of light and darkness.A grandiose idea, born of flying.But underneath the grandiose ideais the thought that what I must engageafter the plane has rage onto the tarmacafter climbing my old stair, sitting downat my old windowis meant to break my heart and reduce me to silence.

IXIn North America time stumbles onwithout moving, only releasinga certain North American pain.Julia de Burgos wrote:That my grandfather was a slaveis my grief; had he been a masterthat would have been my shame.A poet's words, hung over a doorin North America, in the yearnineteen-eighty-three.The almost-full moon risestimeless speaking of changeout of the Bronx, the Harlem Riverthe drowned towns of the Quabbinthe pilfered burial moundsthe toxic swamps, the testing-groundsand I start to speak again.